Boltcam
Watch the skies with your Raspberry Pi!
What is Boltcam?
Boltcam is a DIY weather camera that you can build yourself using a Raspberry Pi and a camera module, developed by the Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS) at the University of Maryland: College Park. It continuously monitors the sky for lightning strikes to verify measurements from the MALMA network. A web interface allows you to see the real time camera feed and download footage from a date and time of your choosing.
Where is Boltcam?
Boltcam cameras are located through the eastern United States, particularly around locations within the MALMA lightning detection network. You can check on the map below to see where current camera are located.
How does Boltcam work?
Boltcam is designed to be run on a Raspberry Pi with a camera module. We chose to utilize this camera module because it offers the ability to process and record video at 90 frames per second (FPS). This is critical for our use case since lightning strikes are very fast events that otherwise might be missed with a lower FPS camera.
It uses a Python application that controls the camera, archives video clips, and serves a web server to allow for remote control. It also leverages ffmpeg and mediamtx to encode video and allow for streaming a live video feed. A Boltcam operator can access the live feed, control the camera, and download archived footage through a web interface.
The web interface is built as a single-page application (SPA) and hosted separately from the Python application. This allows for easier updates to the web interface without needing to modify the core camera application. Additionally, the web interface allows for accessing multiple cameras with a camera selector menu.
Boltcam also has the ability to connect a GPS device to provide accurate timestamps and location data for each camera. This is important for verifying lightning strike data by ensuring that the footage is accurately time-stamped and geolocated.